I WAS COLD. I tried to find a pair of long woolen ward socks to keep my feet
warm in order that I should not die under the new treatment, electric shock
therapy, and have my body sneaked out the back way to the mortuary. Every
morning I woke in dread, waiting for the day nurse to go on her rounds and
announce from the list of names in her hand whether or not I was for shock
treatment, the new and fashionable means of quieting people and of making
them realize that orders are to be obeyed and floors are to be polished without
anyone protesting and faces are made to be fixed into smiles and weeping is a
crime. Waiting in the early morning, in the black-capped frosted hours, was
like waiting for the pronouncement of a death sentence.

I tried to remember the incidents of the day before. Had I wept? Had I refused to obey an order from one of the nurses? Or, becoming upset at the sight
of a very ill patient, had I panicked, and tried to escape? Had a nurse threatened, "If you don't take care you'll be for treatment tomorrow?" Day after day
I spent the time scanning the faces of the staff as carefully as if they were radar
screens which might reveal the approach of the fate that had been prepared for
me. I was cunning. "Let me mop the office," I pleaded. "Let me mop the office
in the evenings, for by evening the film of germs has settled on your office furniture and report books, and if the danger is not removed you might fall prey
to disease which means disquietude and fingerprints and a sewn shroud of
cheap cotton."

So I mopped the office, as a precaution, and sneaked across to the sister's
desk and glanced quickly at the open report book and the list of names for
treatment the next morning. One time I read my name there, Istina Mavet.
What had I done? I hadn't cried or spoken out of turn or refused to work the
bumper with the polishing rag under it or to help set the tables for tea, or to
carry out the overflowing pig-tin to the side door. There was obviously a crime
which was unknown to me, which I had not included in my list because I could
not track it with the swinging spotlight of my mind to the dark hinterland of

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